Organizational citizenship behaviour in IT professionals: an expectancy theory approach

Purpose – Previous research has found that information technology (IT) professionals exhibit significantly lower organizational citizenship behaviour (OCB) than non‐IT professionals. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to examine how an IT professional's job stress, trust, and commitment affect the valence of job satisfaction, which in turn influences his or her OCB. Design/methodology/approach – A snowball sampling approach was used as it was the best available approach. The authors first sent out email invitations to IT professionals at a large mid‐western university and used their personal referrals to locate other IT professionals. After deleting unusable responses, 85 responses were obtained. The hypotheses were tested using partial least squares and multiple regression techniques. Findings – The results confirmed the significant relationship between valence of job satisfaction and OCB and the relationship between OCB and actual job satisfaction. Additionally, commitment to organization and profession contributed significantly to valence of job satisfaction. Research limitations/implications – With some limitations such as the use of snowball sampling, this study provides an additional support for expectancy theory in the IT setting. Practical implications – The paper shows that exhibiting OCB results in job satisfaction in the IT setting. Moreover, it is demonstrated that IT professionals' perceptions of the valence of job satisfaction would be influenced more by financial rewards than by non‐financial rewards. Furthermore, because of the difficulty of changing profession and the ease of changing workplace, IT professionals' commitment to the profession might be higher than commitment to their organizations. Originality/value – The paper provides a starting point for the investigation of OCB exhibited by highly skilled professionals.